Digging deeper

MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON247-4783

Provocative new evidence sprang from several features in the north corner of James Fort this past week, prompting archaeologists to raise their hopes for the significance of what had been routine excavations. Straining to trace the outline of a badly disturbed hearth constructed about 1617, the scientists uncovered evidence of a much earlier feature - possibly a well - that could date to the first years of the historic English fort.

Artifact of the week

Archaeologists recovered two hand-molded clay balls while exploring an early pit located partly beneath the footing of a circa 1610 row house known as Structure 175. Measuring nearly 2 inches across, they probably were used to play such early bowling games as skittles. "Most people have this image of Jamestown as a stark, desperate place - full of gloom and doom - and sometimes it was," says Bly Straube, Jamestown Rediscovery curator. "But artifacts like these - and two other balls we've found - show that the colonists also had the time and the desire for amusements."

Archaeological feature of the week

In addition to the clay balls, the rich trash pit in the fort's north corner has given up numerous examples of butchered horse bones - possibly from the Starving Time of 1609-1610 - and more than 100 pounds of iron slag. "It's not blacksmith debris. It's definitely from smelting - and probably from testing all the samples of iron ore they brought back in the first few years of the fort," archaeologist Carter Hudgins says. "These guys went right to work when they got here - and they knew what they were doing. They tested all sorts of things in an attempt to find ways to bring the Virginia Company profits."

In the lab

Archaeologists had to work quickly this week to preserve a largely intact dog skull unearthed from the early trash pit cut by Structure 175. Initially recovered in a mass of soil that included the surrounding clay, the fragile artifact was rapidly excavated in the lab, then washed and sealed in a plastic bag for controlled drying. "With any bone artifact - if you let it dry in the air - the bone will crack," laboratory assistant Caroline Taylor says. "So with something of significance like this, we have to take it out of the dirt quickly - because the dirt will dry it out, too - then let it dry out slowly."

Pinning down the past

A recent visit to the Museum of London helped Straube solve the mystery of a tiny brass classical figure found inside the fort last year. "We had thought it was the finial to a knife. But we learned that it's a decorative element from a box - probably a late 16th-century box - made in Nuremberg," Straube says. "It would have been a special box - and it would have belonged to a high-status person."

Putting the puzzle together

Archaeologists were surprised and rewarded this past week when their painstaking excavation of a badly disturbed hearth led another 30 inches below the surface, revealing the deeply hidden evidence of what could be James Fort's earliest well. "At some point in its history, this hearth sank into an earlier feature that had been backfilled and forgotten," senior archaeologist Jamie May says. "The only thing we can think of that would cause that kind of event is a well. So we're going to have to dig even deeper before we can put this thing to bed." «